The present invention relates to managing an integration flow, and more particularly to computing inputs to a component in an integration flow.
Integration products implement trigger-action, data synchronization and batch scenarios between different applications. An integration flow is an artifact of an integration product, produced by a tool such as a graphical flow editor and executed by the integration product runtime. An integration flow is a sequence of nodes (i.e., components) that are linked together and represent an event-driven control through an integration, which is a software development activity in which separate software components are combined into an executable whole. Each of the nodes in an integration flow typically performs an integration action (e.g., accessing an external system and retrieving data from the external system, posting data to an external system, or making a call to an external system and generating data from the call). Each node in the integration flow is a component which has inputs and outputs that encapsulate a particular interaction with an object exposed by an external application. When a user configures a component of an integration flow, the shape of the object that is produced by the operation (i.e., the schema) is discovered from the application. The schema represents the output of the component of the integration flow.
The context of an integration flow specifies data that may be used to perform actions by components of the integration flow at a particular time. A context object (e.g., a JavaScript® Object Notation (JSON) document) specifies the context of the integration flow. JavaScript is a registered trademark of Oracle America, Inc. located in Redwood Shores, Calif. At the beginning of the integration flow, the context in the context object contains data from the event that drives the integration flow. As the integration flow executes, more data is added to the context. Any action performed in the integration flow can be configured to use data from what is in the context at a given time.